Dave’s Pond near Faber, Virginia: Glynn Wilson

Secret Vistas –
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – It is a relief to hang out by a pond in the mountains of Virginia on an old apple orchard. At this point in life, cool nights are of more value than hot beaches.

Thus begins a new adventure in cheap living in a Dodge Roadtrek camper van.

We moved the final load of stuff out of the suburban house on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama on Monday and headed for Knoxville, Tennessee, where Jefferson and I spent the night partying at the Magnolia Bed and Breakfast with my good friend Kay Newton, a poet and writer of some note. She came in second in The Southerner magazine’s Robert Penn Warren Fiction contest in the year 2000.

The next day, we made our way to an undisclosed location in the mountains of Virginia, where we worked on the camper van setup for a couple of days and chilled out by Dave’s Pond.

By noon on Thursday, however, it was time to pull out and head north for Washington, D.C.

The traffic was backed up for miles and miles on the Capital Beltway, I-495, so it took awhile to get through to Silver Spring, Maryland, where we setup shop for the night.

The plan for Friday is to check in at our new corporate office on Colesville Road and then begin exploring the area for free and cheap camp sites, including the federal Greenbelt Park, described by the National Park Service as an “Urban Oasis.”

Then on Sunday, we will be taking the Metro down to DC to the National Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian where we have a photograph on display in a new exhibit entitled Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations.

Stay tuned for more updates soon to follow our new adventure in cheap camper van living and covering politics from the nation’s capital.